Clive Warner's Blog - Posts Tagged "islam"
KUFAR
This is an extract from "Kufar" a novel I am working on right now. It is about Islamic terror in the UK.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Zafir was Yazid's 'gofer'. Hasan had the sinewy build of an athlete, wide shouldered and narrow hipped, while Zafir was a wrestler; legs like pillars, his abdomen plated with muscle. Working out with weights had given him arms to match the legs.
He'd enjoyed helping the Sheikh to deal with the spy.
There was one other big difference between Hasan and Zafir. Hasan was the pretty boy, the come-play-with-me merchant who specialised in teenage girls. Zafir was the scavenger, the hand that tried the doorknob, the black shape in black night who came looking, just like now. He shifted uncomfortably, cramped from the fifteen minutes he'd waited behind the old hospital, as the last light faded from the western sky.
There didn't seem to be a watchman. Now's as good a time as any, he thought.
He went into the complex behind the incinerator. Senses alert, he slid over a low wall. A sour smell hung in the air though the place had been abandoned for the last four months and was due for demolition.
Zafir stopped behind an outbuilding and listened for signs of life. A rickety corridor connected the furnace rooms to the main structure. Paint was peeling from the decayed plywood and corrugated plastic.
The side door yielded easily to his short pry bar. He slipped through and pulled the door closed behind him, then made his way quickly along a short passage and through an unlocked wooden door.
There were no more obstacles, so he stowed the jemmy away in its home-made leather sling and moved into a second corridor. This one looked like part of the main building, its age betrayed by the Victorian decor. Arsenic green tiles, suffused with a network of hairline cracks, came nearly halfway up the walls. Above the tiles, the wall was in mildewed cream plaster, relieved by a thin green line painted one inch below the ceiling.
After another twenty yards, a corridor branched off to the left. He paused at the junction, listening to the slight settling noises in the old building. Finally, he risked using his penlight: it seemed that once there had been a sign, but now there was only a discoloured patch of wall. The shadows were deeper in the left corridor; he turned, padded quickly forwards.
'Sluice' . . . 'Day Room' . . . a broom cupboard . . . the corridor ended in a T. The short right-hand branch led to a double door: Theatre. He turned left, then right, a ten-yard dogleg. A biting smell was in the air. Another door faced him: 'Pathology'. He turned and found a dark shadow on the left. His torch revealed a stairwell going down in a clockwise spiral.
The steps were pierced metal, tapering on the inside edge to less than the length of a foot. He was tempted to rest a hand on the corroded metal bannister -- but no, the jagged surface might cut his latex gloves. He took the stairs carefully, keeping to the outside. At the bottom, the well opened into a small vestibule. The air was stagnant and clouds of dust rose as he shuffled forwards.
His knee came into sharp contact with a solid object. Stumbling, Zafir uttered a muffled curse. Unseen in the murk, a low table had caught his knee. Recovering, he shone the light down and noted with interest two mouldering magazines.
Reaching out a gloved hand, he picked one up. Small flakes of decayed paper fell back onto the table. By torchlight, he made out the title: 'Woman's Own' and the date: 1965. Thirty years, he thought, this place lay forgotten. He tried to open the magazine but it fell apart in his fingers. When he raised the light, he saw a door on the opposite wall. A padlock, encrusted with rust, secured it.
The inner room had not been used since the mid-sixties. The flashlight glowed on bulks of machinery, festooned with heavy cables and hoses. He pulled at one; flakes of rubber broke off in his hand. The conduit came away easily, someone had severed the connections with a knife or saw. It didn't take him more than a minute to discover that the place had been stripped. No mercury or platinum, just scrap lead and copper. Not worth the risk of hauling it away.
He took a final look. Under the largest device was an old trolley, like a mobile stretcher: a treatment table. Moving around the room, he discovered a storage cubicle let into the wall, its heavy metal panel secured with a Yale lock. In the centre of the door faded yellow decals clung to flakes of rust.
He tried the number three Yale skeleton in the lock, but it was seized solid, immovable. Zafir took out the pry bar again. The plate yielded reluctantly, a shriek of metal against metal echoing through the distant corridors as he forced it open on rusted hinges.
Inside stood a squat cylinder eight inches in diameter and a foot high, dull gray in the beam of the pocket torch. It bore the same yellow decals as the panel, but these were bright and undimmed with age. Underneath the symbol, writing boldly declared:
"Cobalt 60 nuclear source. Handle only with suitable protection."
Cobalt. He liked the sound of it. It wasn't platinum or even mercury. But nuclear stuff must be worth good money. Sheikh Yazid would be pleased.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Zafir was Yazid's 'gofer'. Hasan had the sinewy build of an athlete, wide shouldered and narrow hipped, while Zafir was a wrestler; legs like pillars, his abdomen plated with muscle. Working out with weights had given him arms to match the legs.
He'd enjoyed helping the Sheikh to deal with the spy.
There was one other big difference between Hasan and Zafir. Hasan was the pretty boy, the come-play-with-me merchant who specialised in teenage girls. Zafir was the scavenger, the hand that tried the doorknob, the black shape in black night who came looking, just like now. He shifted uncomfortably, cramped from the fifteen minutes he'd waited behind the old hospital, as the last light faded from the western sky.
There didn't seem to be a watchman. Now's as good a time as any, he thought.
He went into the complex behind the incinerator. Senses alert, he slid over a low wall. A sour smell hung in the air though the place had been abandoned for the last four months and was due for demolition.
Zafir stopped behind an outbuilding and listened for signs of life. A rickety corridor connected the furnace rooms to the main structure. Paint was peeling from the decayed plywood and corrugated plastic.
The side door yielded easily to his short pry bar. He slipped through and pulled the door closed behind him, then made his way quickly along a short passage and through an unlocked wooden door.
There were no more obstacles, so he stowed the jemmy away in its home-made leather sling and moved into a second corridor. This one looked like part of the main building, its age betrayed by the Victorian decor. Arsenic green tiles, suffused with a network of hairline cracks, came nearly halfway up the walls. Above the tiles, the wall was in mildewed cream plaster, relieved by a thin green line painted one inch below the ceiling.
After another twenty yards, a corridor branched off to the left. He paused at the junction, listening to the slight settling noises in the old building. Finally, he risked using his penlight: it seemed that once there had been a sign, but now there was only a discoloured patch of wall. The shadows were deeper in the left corridor; he turned, padded quickly forwards.
'Sluice' . . . 'Day Room' . . . a broom cupboard . . . the corridor ended in a T. The short right-hand branch led to a double door: Theatre. He turned left, then right, a ten-yard dogleg. A biting smell was in the air. Another door faced him: 'Pathology'. He turned and found a dark shadow on the left. His torch revealed a stairwell going down in a clockwise spiral.
The steps were pierced metal, tapering on the inside edge to less than the length of a foot. He was tempted to rest a hand on the corroded metal bannister -- but no, the jagged surface might cut his latex gloves. He took the stairs carefully, keeping to the outside. At the bottom, the well opened into a small vestibule. The air was stagnant and clouds of dust rose as he shuffled forwards.
His knee came into sharp contact with a solid object. Stumbling, Zafir uttered a muffled curse. Unseen in the murk, a low table had caught his knee. Recovering, he shone the light down and noted with interest two mouldering magazines.
Reaching out a gloved hand, he picked one up. Small flakes of decayed paper fell back onto the table. By torchlight, he made out the title: 'Woman's Own' and the date: 1965. Thirty years, he thought, this place lay forgotten. He tried to open the magazine but it fell apart in his fingers. When he raised the light, he saw a door on the opposite wall. A padlock, encrusted with rust, secured it.
The inner room had not been used since the mid-sixties. The flashlight glowed on bulks of machinery, festooned with heavy cables and hoses. He pulled at one; flakes of rubber broke off in his hand. The conduit came away easily, someone had severed the connections with a knife or saw. It didn't take him more than a minute to discover that the place had been stripped. No mercury or platinum, just scrap lead and copper. Not worth the risk of hauling it away.
He took a final look. Under the largest device was an old trolley, like a mobile stretcher: a treatment table. Moving around the room, he discovered a storage cubicle let into the wall, its heavy metal panel secured with a Yale lock. In the centre of the door faded yellow decals clung to flakes of rust.
He tried the number three Yale skeleton in the lock, but it was seized solid, immovable. Zafir took out the pry bar again. The plate yielded reluctantly, a shriek of metal against metal echoing through the distant corridors as he forced it open on rusted hinges.
Inside stood a squat cylinder eight inches in diameter and a foot high, dull gray in the beam of the pocket torch. It bore the same yellow decals as the panel, but these were bright and undimmed with age. Underneath the symbol, writing boldly declared:
"Cobalt 60 nuclear source. Handle only with suitable protection."
Cobalt. He liked the sound of it. It wasn't platinum or even mercury. But nuclear stuff must be worth good money. Sheikh Yazid would be pleased.
